Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Don't light 'em up just yet

Am I the only one that thinks that giving Raul his brother's spot will result in NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER for Cuba? Six of one, but only a half dozen of the other...

Hey, I didn't open the barn door, I'm just smacking the cow on the ass.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Raul Castro just named Michael Moore to the Head of the Ministry of Health (brought to you by McDonald's).

HTUJP said...

Nahhh, Keep your cuban smokes in your pocket for a while. I don't think there is any possibility of change until Fidel takes a dirt nap.

Cornelius said...

Of course things won't change; that's why Fidel made Raul his number 2. Cuba will still be a dictatorship. They will also probably continue to have lower infant mortality rates and higher literacy rates than the United States (current rates obtained from the CIA World Factbook). Now, if we could just get the lower infant mortality and higher literacy parts without the dictatorship part ... I'm just saying.

Unknown said...

Yeah, that whole infant mortality rate is a sham. The information in the Factbook comes only from the CUBAN GOV'T itself. If they want to say no babies died they could. 20/20 had a story on how those facts were obtained and, unbelievably the Cubans made all those figures up. This is also according to a doctor that just recently fled Cuba. Everyone thinks the grass is greener on the communist/socialist side of the fence. Right up to the point where they actually see the grass is like the "field" in Green Bay in December. Just green painted dirt, dude. There is a reason why people in Miami are not swimming the other way.

Cornelius said...

How could 20/20 have proven that the Cuban government made the figures up? I think that would be impossible to do. (I looked for the 20/20 report online but couldn't find an HTML version or video of it.) It is true that the UN gets their health information from the countries themselves, but that's as true for the U.S. as it is for Cuba and every other country. And every country would seem to have an interest in reporting numbers that are better than reality, not that they would necessarily do so. So if we want to disregard the UN's statistics on Cuba's health indicators because A) the statistics are unverifiable, and B) the country in question has an incentive to lie to make itself look better, then we'll have to disregard UN health indicators for every country in the world, because those two conditions apply to all countries. Which means we can no longer have the debate over whose infant mortality rates are lower.

Surely you didn't mean it when you said, "Everyone thinks the grass is greener on the communist/socialist side of the fence." If that were true, Dubya wouldn't have his 49% majority, now would he? And for myself, I think all dicatorship is evil and wrong, period. That fact alone about Cuba would be enough to induce me to make the swim. But as both the UK (who we seem to love as our ally) and France (who we seem to hate for general purposes) have been demonstrating ever since WWII, you can have socialistic government policies without having a dictatorship. Whether the grass is actually greener in those places is a different matter. I'll be going to both places in April, so I'll report back and let you know!

Unknown said...

it was John Stossel's program. I don't know if that's 20/20, 60 mins. or what. Of course we can disregard the UN. I think that's a great idea. Outside of a few programs they have can you think of a reason to give them 7 billion dollars per year (their estimated budget next year. Double last year's). I also don't know where the "Dubya" comment stems from, but surely you don't think he is running that type of gov't. I would LOVE to hear which socialistic policies aren't bankrupting those countries (welfare, "free" healthcare, incredibly high tax rates) and the ones proposed by the left won't do much good either.